GOP poll: Mitt Romney leads Obama in 5 of 6 swing states

By Alexander Burns

01/18/12 07:12 PM EST

Mitt Romney currently leads President Barack Obama by competitive margins in five general election swing states, according to private polling conducted for the Idaho-based GOP firm GS Strategy Group and shared with POLITICO.

The consulting firm -- headed by Republican strategist Greg Strimple -- tested Romney against Obama in six states: Florida, Ohio, Nevada, New Mexico, Virginia and Wisconsin. Romney led in all but New Mexico, where the race was an exact tie.

Romney bested the president in Florida by 5 points, in Ohio by 7 points, in Nevada by 11 points, in Virginia by 3 points and in Wisconsin by a mere 1 percentage point.

Some of those margins are more significant than others and, in any case, it’s worth remembering that it’s not a neutral poll.

But the underlying dynamics gauged in the survey signal that Obama still has to contend with deep dissatisfaction with his job performance, particularly among independent voters. In all six states, his approval rating is in net negative territory – in Nevada, by a 16-point margin.

While Obama keeps the race close against Romney in most of the states polled, he’s at a disadvantage in all of them among independent voters. In Ohio, the poll finds him losing independents by 23 points. In Florida, the race among unaffiliated voters is far closer, with Romney ahead by only 2 points.

And if Democrats hope to run against Romney by tearing down his record in the financial services sector, the GOP poll tries to cast doubt on that strategy: asked if they believe “banks or Wall Street” or “the government in Washington” has done more to negatively affect the country, all the states choose Washington by a gap of 20-plus percentage points.

The poll tested between 400 and 600 likely voters in each state, for a margin of error of between plus or minus 4 and 4.9 percentage points from state to state. The full survey is viewable here.